Digging for Details: Painstaking Research results in Brilliant 3D re-creation of Mayan Ruins

Digging for Details: Painstaking Research results in Brilliant 3D re-creation of Mayan Ruins.

By Rachael Taggart

Being offered the chance to record, reconstruct and then create a documentary about a 1,000 year old Maya city is not something that many of us get. Clement Valla, an architectural designer by profession and a 3D freelance modeler by choice, was offered the opportunity in 2005, and has spent the last year planning, traveling, and working on the project. The ultimate result will be a series of video documentaries that reconstruct the city while trying to provide resolution to a number of theories about city planning in at these ancient sites.

PAPAC, or Proyecto Arqueologico para la Planificacion de la Antigua Copan, is based at the UNESCO World Heritage ruins in the Copan River Valley in Western Honduras. Regarded as one of the most important Maya ruins, the city was abandoned in the early 10 th century after many hundreds of years of habitation. In 2005, the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Colgate University, NY, in partnership with PAPAC, and sponsored by the Honduran Ministry of Culture, and funded by National Geographic and Colgate, started a project to determine if intentional city planning was a part of the growth of Maya cities. The archaeological team also wanted to investigate a hunch that the city planning was influenced by socio-political and religious ideas, especially those centered on Maya Kingship. To do this, they would need to be able to reconstruct parts of the city and the valley landscape based on archaeological findings. And to achieve that, the project team needed to be able to access 3D digital technology and expertise. For that, they turned to Clement Valla.

While planning for the project started in 2005, Valla’s work really started when he visited the ruins in February 2006.

“The first part of the project was for to work with info from a completed dig,” says Valla. “This means the excavations had already been covered back up for conservation purposes. I had to work with hand-drawn plans, maps and was also able to generate some GIS data on-site for referencing.”

Taking several hundred hand-drawn plans of the dig, Valla scanned them all and then imported them into Rhinoceros, 3D NURBs modeler software. At that point he could arrange the 2D scans into 3D layers that created a set of working reference points for construction of a 3D model. The GIS data that Valla had recorded was also imported directly into the 3D software to enable accurate scaling of the model and accurate topological modeling directly in the software.

“Arranging all this disparate data in Rhino was very easy,” says Valla. “Once the data was in, I could reconstruct the ruins themselves in 3D. That’s when the interesting aspects started – reconstructing the buildings as they were 1000 years ago.”

Using very detailed notes, the archaeological team and Valla could extrapolate what each structure would have looked like.
 

 

“The level of detail from the archaeologists is amazing!” he comments. “Even the most minute details, based on the tiniest of findings like a roof feature, gave these experts the clues to determine what kind of roof structure was used, how high the building was built and so on. I would then reconstruct that in the model.”

The second part of the project was on a current dig a different area of the ancient city, where Valla visited again in March 2006. The ability to survey and record visible ruins brought up more options for Valla to create rapid and accurate 3D data for the model. He opted to use photogrammetry software that would allow the fast creation of 3D data from photos. Valla selected PhotoModeler from Eos Software “because the performance was high and the cost suited our budget.” Using a Nikon SLR camera, Valla took detailed photos of the open trenches and ruins to record the details.

“While we were there, an incredible tomb was discovered, and taking photos allowed us to record exactly how it looked when it was opened as well as giving us usable data for creating the 3D model,” says Valla.

PhotoModeler works by using scans of photos to determine a series of 3D reference points, which can then be imported into 3D CAD systems for a variety of applications including reconstruction of events or scenes.

“With the photogrammetry, we could take away photos and come out with a very precise 3D data model,” says Valla. “This then imported directly into Rhino where the 3D model could be worked on, rendered, animated and used.”

The tomb was apparently in danger of caving in when it was discovered, so the team recorded exactly how it looked before performing construction work to ensure the safety of the archaeologists as they entered the tomb.

“The tomb was well below the ground, and about 3 x 2 x 2 meters in volume, which made photography quite challenging – but really the only option,” says Valla. Apparently the challenges of the vault were numerous – the team could not risk touching the walls as the plaster would fall off. In addition, lighting was a challenge given a weak power source from above. Finally, Valla, with a personal fear of spiders, faced his own fears as he entered the tomb.

“I was very apprehensive of going in to the vault, for all the reasons above, not just the fearsome spiders in Honduras, but we were only there for a week and needed to record as much data as possible,” Valla explains. “The resulting model used about 60 photos of the tomb, and turned out to be highly accurate and a superb recording of the artifact.”

Once all the data was turned in to 3D, and reconstruction work performed in Rhino, the model was exported to 3DS Max for animation and rendering. The animations are the basis of the documentary work, of which there is a short example on the PAPAC web site (www.papacweb.org.) Further editing and production work is still underway on the complete documentaries, which will be available sometime in 2007.

Professor Allan Maca, an archaeologist from Colgate University and director of the PAPAC project commented that the benefits of the 3D reconstructions are multiple, and had high praise for Clement Valla’s skills and abilities.
 

 

“There are many ways that Clement’s work helped – too many to discuss in detail, but the main three are: the reconstruction of the ‘hypothetical’ city are highly detailed and are be quite true to form. We can now see the city in ways that were otherwise impossible with 2D scale drawings, which heightens our understanding and knowledge, now allowing us to test other hypotheses on the ruins.”

“Second,” adds Maca. “The reconstructions go beyond science to an educational level, allowing me to teach students and colleagues about the goals and results of the projects.” Maca points out that Clement’s work on various projects has already been used to directly teach the Honduran Government and public about the importance of ruins located on private lands and the need for their protection from looting. The team is working on securing government protection for ruins that they see are endangered, using the 3D models.

“Finally, Clement’s work, based on multiple sources of data, raised the team members’ awareness of the importance of the data they produce,” Maca continues. “Clement’s focus on detail helped to bring us together as a more closely-nit team, where each of us realized the importance of each aspect of our work and of how this could be used by Clement later. This was incredibly valuable.”
 

 

Maca described the painstaking level of detail and research that Clement Valla engaged in. “Clement’s work is both accurate and provocative, but is the result of months of reading and research that Clement himself underwent, as well as close work with myself and the rest of the team to be able to understand the intricacies of Maya architecture. As a result the 3D reconstruction is accurate, and allows us to develop out thinking in ways we never thought possible. We hope this is an experience we shall repeat with Clement as the project continues.”

Having spent years working on architectural 3D models, renderings for presentations, the project turned out to be “entirely consuming, validating and satisfying,” according to Valla. “But I could not have done this project in just any software,” he adds. “Rhino is so very comfortable to use and so versatile in its 3D commands, that it just works as the glue that ties all this disparate data together into a usable model for the investigation. I find it far faster and easier to create 3D in Rhino and then export to 3DS Max, rather than doing original modeling in 3DS Max. Rhino is seamless in importing and exporting data to other software technology, making projects such as this a pleasure.”

Clement Valla is a freelance 3D Digital Designer based in New York. He can be located at: www.mediumprojects.com

The PAPAC project described above can be seen at www.papacweb.org

Rhinoceros software can be located at www.rhino3d.com

PhotoModeler software can be located at www.photomodeler.com

 

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